Victorian Literature is a comprehensive and fully annotated anthology with a flexible design that allows teachers and students to pursue traditional or innovative lines of inquiry – from the canon to its extensions and its contexts.

Represents the period’s major writers of prose, poetry, drama, and more, including Tennyson, Arnold, the Brownings, Carlyle, Ruskin, the Rossettis, Wilde, Eliot, and the Brontës

Promotes an ideologically and culturally varied view of Victorian society with the inclusion of women, working-class, colonial, and gay and lesbian writers

Incorporates recent scholarship with 5 contextual sections and innovative sub-sections on topics like environmentalism and animal rights; mass literacy and mass media; sex and sexuality; melodrama and comedy; the Irish question; ruling India and the Indian Mutiny and innovations in print culture

Emphasizes the interdisciplinary nature of the field with a focus on social, cultural, artistic, and historical factors

Includes a fully annotated companion website for teachers and students offering expanded context sections, additional readings from key writers, appendices, and an extensive bibliography

Victor Shea is Associate Professor of Humanities and English at
York University, Canada. He holds degrees from University of Prince
Edward Island, University of Toronto, and York University. His
research interests include Victorian culture and literature,
British Empire and imperialism, American Studies, and literary
theory. With William Whitla, he is co-editor of Essays and
Reviews: The 1860 Text and its Readings (2000) and co-author of
Foundations: Critical Thinking, Reading, and Writing
(2nd edition, 2005).

William Whitla is Professor Emeritus and Senior Scholar in
English and Humanities at York University, Canada. He holds
degrees from University of Toronto, TrinityCollege, and University
of Oxford. His research interests include Victorian culture and
literature, literary theory, and interdisciplinary studies in
medieval and Renaissance studies. He is the author of The
English Handbook: A Guide to Literary Studies (Wiley-Blackwell,
2010). With Victor Shea, he is co-editor of Essays and Reviews:
The 1860 Text and its Readings (2000) and co-author of
Foundations: Critical Thinking, Reading, and Writing
(2nd edition, 2005).

“A fully annotated anthology of Victorian literature is a
massive undertaking, and the editors are to be commended for this
near-heroic level of endeavor and the inclusiveness of their
selections.”—Florence Boos, University of Iowa

“In Victorian Literature Shea and Whitla have
created a unique anthology that continues as an online resource,
extending the contents in deep and subtle ways. The reader finds a
rich account of Victorian culture, from issues of
industrialisation, gender, and colonial ideology to the art and
architecture of the period, including the Victorian art
form, the photograph. The comprehensive gathering of poems includes
women's poetry and working-class poetry.”—Isobel
Armstrong, Birkbeck, University of London

Instructors

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